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Local name for Birmingham, England

Brummagem ('/b//r//ʌ//m//ə//dʒ//əm/ BRUMəjəm, ), and historically also Bromichan, Bremicham and many similar variants, is the local name for the city of Birmingham, England, and the dialect associated with it. It gave rise to the terms Brum (a shortened version of Brummagem) and Brummie (applied to inhabitants of the city, their accent and dialect). "Brummagem" and "Brummagem ware" are also terms for cheap and shoddy imitations, in particular when referring to mass produced goods. This use is archaic in the UK, but persists in some specialist areas in the US and Australia.

The word appeared in the Middle Ages as a variant on the older and coexisting form of Birmingham (spelled Bermingeham in Domesday Book), and was in widespread use by the time of the Civil War.

The term's pejorative use appears to have originated with the city's brief 17th century reputation for counterfeited groats. Birmingham's expanding metal industries included the manufacture of weapons. In 1636, one Benjamin Stone petitioned that a large number of swords, which he claimed to have made, should be purchased for the use in the King's service; but in 1637, the Worshipful Company of Cutlers, in London, countered this by stating that these were actually "bromedgham blades" and foreign blades, and that the former "are no way serviceable or fit for his Majesty's store". John F. Hayward, an experienced historian on swords, suggests that London's snobbery towards these blades at that time "may have been due to" commercial rivalry; at that time London was the largest provider of weapons in Britain, and Birmingham was fast becoming a viable commercial threat to their trade. The word passed into political slang in the 1680s. The Protestant supporters of the Exclusion Bill were called by their opponents Birminghams or Brummagems (a slur, in allusion to counterfeiting, implying hypocrisy). Their Tory opponents were known as anti Birminghams or anti Brummagems. Around 1690 Alexander Missen, visiting Bromichan in his travels, said that "swords, heads of canes, snuff boxes, and other fine works of steel," could be had, "cheaper and better here than even in famed Milan." Guy Miege, in The New State of England (1691), wrote: "Bromicham is a large and well built Town, very populous, and much resorted unto; particularly noted, few years ago, for the counterfeit Groats made here, and from hence dispersed all over the Kingdom."

During the 18th century Birmingham was known by several variations of the name "Brummagem". In 1731, an old "road book" said that "Birmingham, Bromicham, or Bremicham, is a large town, well built and populous. The inhabitants, being mostly smiths, are very ingenious in their way, and vend vast quantities of all sorts of iron wares." Around 1750, England's Gazetteer described Birmingham or Bromichan as "a large, well built, and populous town, noted for the most ingenious artificers in boxes, buckles, buttons, and other iron and steel wares; wherein such multitudes of people are employed that they are sent all over Europe; and here is a continual noise of hammers, anvils, and files". The town was renowned for its miscellany of metal and silver industries, some of whose manufacturers used cheap materials, exhibiting poor quality and design. The poorer quality "Brummagem ware" was beginning to give the better more skilled metal workers of the town a bad name; Matthew Boulton of the Lunar Society and several toy makers and silversmiths realized this and campaigned to have the town's first assay office constructed. Great opposition came from the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths in London but royal assent was given for assay offices in both Birmingham and Sheffield on the same day. Eventually this filtered out much of the poor workmanship of silver and jewellery in Birmingham, keeping mainly the higher quality jewellery produced, which ultimately enabled the town to become one of the most important silver manufacturing centres in the 19th century. It is thought by some, including historian Carl Chinn, that around this time Matthew Boulton favoured "Birmingham" over "Brummagem" to avoid negative connotations.

"Brummagem" remained a staple of British political and critical discourse into the early 20th century. The Times of 13 August 1901 quoted a House of Commons speech by J. G. Swift MacNeill on the subject of the Royal Titles Bill: "The initiative of the Bill  had the 'Brummagem' brand from top to bottom. It was a mean attempt, inspired by the absurd and vulgar spirit of Imperialism, to subsidize the Crown with a parvenu title, and a tawdry gewgaw reputation". A Punch book review for December 1917 said: "But, to be honest, the others (with the exception of one quaint little comedy of a canine ghost) are but indifferent stuff, too full of snakes and hidden treasure and general tawdriness – the kind of Orientalism, in fact, that one used to associate chiefly with the Earl's Court Exhibition. Mrs. PERRIN must not mingle her genuine native goods with such Brummagem ware". In John Galsworthy's In Chancery (1920), the second volume of his Forsyte Saga trilogy (Book II, Part II, Chapter I: The Third Generation), when responding to the question, "Do you know Crum? ", Jolly Forsyte replies, "Of Merton? Only by sight. He's in that fast set too, isn't he? Rather La di da and Brummagem." Around this time, Birmingham's foremost criminal gang referred to themselves as the Brummagem boys. By the late 20th and early 21st centuries, British usage had shifted toward a purely geographical and even positive sense. The Housing Design Awards 1998 said of one Birmingham project, City Heights, "this gutsy Brummagem bruiser of a building handles its landmark status with ease and assurance". In The Guardian "Notes from the touchline" sport report, 21 March 2003, journalist Frank Keating used the headline "World Cup shines with dinkum Brummagem" to praise the performance of Birmingham born Australian cricketer Andrew Symonds. A particular activist in reclaiming the term as a traditional name reflecting positive aspects of the city's heritage is historian Carl Chinn MBE, Professor of Community History at the University of Birmingham, who produces Brummagem Magazine. The British poet Roy Fisher (b. 1930) uses the term in his poetry sequence, "Six Texts For a Film", in Birmingham River (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). "Birmingham's what I think with. / It's not made for that sort of job,/ but it's what they gave me. / As a means of thinking, it's a Brummagem/ screwdriver" (lines 1–4). The village of New Birmingham/Glengoole in County Tipperary, Ireland is known locally as Brimigim.

In the US, the negative usage appears to have continued into the 1930s. F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1922 novel The Beautiful and Damned uses the word twice: "It was one of the type known as 'tourist' cars, a sort of brummagem Pullman a single patch of vivid green trees that guaranteed the brummagem umbrageousness of Riverside Drive". Gilbert Seldes, in his 1924 book The Seven Lively Arts, wrote in praise of Krazy Kat: "everything paste and brummagem has had its vogue with us; and a genuine, honest native product has gone unnoticed". It appears in two essays by H. L. Mencken from 1926: "Valentino" ("Consider the sordid comedy of his two marriages – the brummagem, star spangled passion that invaded his very deathbed!") and "A Glance Ahead" ("It would be hard to find a country in which such brummagem serene highnesses are revered with more passionate devotion than they get in the United States."). Mencken's influence is apparent when the term appears in John Fante's 1939 novel Ask the Dust: "The church must go, it is the haven of the booboisie, of boobs and bounders and all brummagem mountebanks." Currently US collectors of political memorabilia use "brummagem" to refer to imitations. The Dictionary of Sexual Terms and Expressions by Farlex Inc., maintainers of TheFreeDictionary. com, lists several related terms such as "Brummagem buttons", tufts sewn to brassiere cups to give the appearance of larger nipples. Lemony Snicket, in his 1999 young adult novel The Reptile Room, introduces brummagem as a "rare word for 'fake'".

A song, "I Can't Find Brummagem", was written by James Dobbs (1781–1837), a Midland music hall entertainer. "The Birmingham School of Business School", a song by The Fall on the 1992 album Code: Selfish, about the "creative accounting techniques" of Trevor Long, a manager of the band, includes the lyric "Brummagem School of Business School".